As someone who’s watch Fate/Zero, I was intrigued by this new anime adaptation that followed Waver as an adult. I’m not the most versed person when it comes to the Fate/Zero lore and universe but I know enough. Still, I will admit that I had trouble following this episode.

To give you some synopsis of this anime:

The Case Files of Lord El-Melloi II is a Japanese light novel series written by Makoto Sanda (Rental Magica) and illustrated by Mineji Sakamoto. The novels serves as an interquel between the events of Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night, focusing on Lord El-Melloi II, a former master who now investigates several mysteries after his participation in the Fourth Holy Grail War.

When Lord El-Melloi II, the later Waver Velvet, gets asked to claim his inheritance over Adra Castle, he travels there with his apprentice Gray to do so. But they are not the only ones called that way. The will of the previous owner states that the assembled contestants—including Luviagelita Edelfelt—must compete in a game of wits to win the castle.

As one of the Lords of the Clock Tower as well as the department head of the Modern Magecraft Theories department, Lord El-Melloi II holds yet another lecture for his diverse array of students. After the post-lecture meeting with other Clock Tower nobility, he throws out a few insults at the fellow Lords that are interested only in their internal power struggle, but he quickly receives a counter-curse in retaliation. On the following day, while in transit with his apprentice Gray, he notices a cat ran over by a car. It’s the stray cat that frequently visited his room as of late. Lord El-Melloi II realizes that this was an attempt to take his own life, and commences a perpetrator hunt along with Gray, Flat and Svin.

It was very difficult to follow. I understand that this is episode 0 and it’s just to give us a taste of what this anime novel adaptation will be about but I just couldn’t grasp what was happening. One minute the tone was all serious and Waver was giving some deep lore about the lore of being a Lord and Mages looking all badass and shit, then the next minute he trips up and falls flat on his face. I get it, they’re trying to keep his character intact but still it’s a bit off. I can also see that they’re probably aren’t going to dive deep into this mage stuff too. Every time they introduced a new term, I was waiting for them to explain it but it never happened.

In Fate/Zero they never did too, all I knew was that there’s mages factions/family who fight over a grail each war. Yeah, I simplified it a bit bu you’d get me if you watched the anime. Hopefully, now they’ll use this new anime to expand the Fate/Zero universe even further.

By the 10 minutes mark, I was watching it simple because I thought Gray was a pretty cool character. Yeah, she hasn’t done much, but her attire alone made her cool. Waver on the underhand was something else. He did grow on me by the end but that was mostly because I knew who he was as a character and I wanted to learn more about why he ended up like this. Had he had been a completely new character, I wouldn’t have cared. Also, I like the T-shirt part, that was a nice touch.

Overall, I’ll still give this a chance. I’m not going to drop it after one episode and plus that battle scene with the car was enough to keep me around